Imagining An Old Timey World With 'InstaVox'

What if there was an app that did for your voice what Instagram does for you photos? We propose InstaVox — an app that takes speech and applies different filters. Audie Cornish and Robert Siegel have more.

Instagram turns modern photos into images reminiscent of snapshots from long ago. But that clever tool omits something that we appreciate here in radio: sound. Suppose a determined app developer could give us a way to filter our modern voices into how people sounded long ago? A touch of audio nostalgia.

AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

And to save that hypothetical genius the trouble, we already have a name for this important new app: We'll call it InstaVox. It would replace our present-day remarks, our syntax, our idioms with a retro sound shared instantly with friends on Facebook, Twitter or any other site. Merely speak into your InstaVox app, as you would normally...

SIEGEL: Hey. Listen up, dudes. Stop freaking out about the economy. We're going to be OK.

CORNISH: ...select the Great Depression filter, and out comes...

PRESIDENT FRANKLIN ROOSEVELT: Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.

SIEGEL: Or say the phrase...

CORNISH: O-M-G. You guys rock. We've had so much fun together. Can we do it again?

SIEGEL: And select the British Royal filter, and you get a young Princess Elizabeth.

QUEEN ELIZABETH II: In wishing you all good evening, I feel that I am speaking to friends and companions who have shared with my sister and myself many a happy children's hour.

CORNISH: Develop it. When someone buys you out for a couple billion dollars, remember your local public radio station at fundraising time.

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